04.05.2008 - 6:36 p.m.

My husband lost his job the third week of March. He was employed again in a week, thankfully, but on a different schedule. Late. And on this late, family dinnerless schedule, we�ve become kitchen slobs.

It�s not that we were ever kitchen saints. But we had at least reached that post-college stage where, while there is often stuff in the sink, it is easily-recognized stuff. You remember what day it was that you used the pot in question, and you know what manner of organic substance is caked to it. Things are handled long before they become science experiments.

We had my family down for Easter, the last weekend before his new job started. I� I don�t know how to say this.

I don�t think we�ve done the dishes since then.

I tried to tackle it this afternoon, before heading over to a friend�s house for a movie. It�s� a much larger job than I thought. I�m afraid I�m quite possibly toxic, just by.proximity. So much lunchbox Tupperware. So much awful, frightening, stagnant water, originally meant to soak the food off a bowl of� tuna salad? Or--oh god--tuna-salad-flavored cat hork? And how old does cereal milk have to be, anyway, before you can just consider it cheese?

Also. Dear my husband, who habitually makes fun of me for throwing eggshells in the trash when we own a perfectly functional garbage disposal: You will be explaining, when you get home tonight, why it is preferable to toss them into the sink containing the garbage disposal, but not to actually run it, leaving the shells to develop individual foetid colonies of retch-making primordial ooze.

Those eggshells were when I decided it was halfway done, and he could do the rest.

-stonebridge

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